Whereabouts and Whatnot: Marathon Staffel at Tempelhof Flughaven

I ran another race this past Sunday (the 20th of November). I ran a 10K leg in a marathon relay at the old Tempelhof airport. My team was called Wissenschaft ausser Atem (meaning "science out of breath") and consisted of a motley assortment of academics who are in some way connected to Patricia Schulz, one of my colleagues here at the iFQ. As often happens, somebody pulled out last week and Patricia needed someone to fill in, so I got on board. Then she had some emergency dental work last Wednesday and had to pull out herself.

It was a fairly warm day for November, and the coldest part was just waiting around in the airplane hangar. This is a pretty big event and there were over 7000 people participating. I ran a pretty good time of 49:01, although I could tell that I was not in top shape and was just plodding along. Our team (Clemens, Jesse, Nadja, myself, and Sergiu) came in 602nd in our category (there were 1043 mixed teams) with a total time of 3:35, which is pretty good for a marathon. Running on the concrete infield and runways was hard on the legs, as that surface has absolutely no "give" (one doesn't want any of that when landing a big airplane!).